Research Summaries

Back Recovery of Unique 5G NR Mobile Identifiers with Passive Collection

Fiscal Year 2021
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Electrical & Computer Engineering
Investigator(s) McEachen, II, John C.
Roth, John D.
Tummala, Murali
Sponsor Department of Defense Space (DoD)
Summary 5G New Radio (NR) is an emerging technology for high data rate mobile access. It was defined by the European Third Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) as a follow-on to the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard for fourth generation mobile devices. Due to convergence of mobile standards, the adoption of 5G NR is inevitable for future mobile phone adoption. Many global telecommunications providers are actively promoting 5G NR. The proposal represents efforts with the strategic objective of Cooperative Collection under the technical domain of Discovery Research to develop novel methods for recovering unique mobile identifiers in the presence of high noise. Specifically, the 5G NR standard uses a unique identifier for each mobile device to scramble the signal intended for a particular mobile. We propose a method for recovering this identifier by exploiting attributes of the error correction coding mechanism this standard employs. We intend to develop a method for examining general patterns in indices generated by the polar encoding and decoding processes. These patterns form a polarization matrix which facilitates generation of a syndrome table for revealing viable identifiers in a computationally efficient manner. We propose to investigate the ability to recover such identifiers in the presence of noise and interference, such as that seen from a satellite. Validation will be conducted in year one through simulation of NR signals and in year two with actual 5G NR basestations (gNodeB). We are not aware of any existing capability to recover these identifiers. LT Ryan Goldsmith could potentially be assigned to the sponsor following completion of his degree work.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal